Afghanistan Opium and ‘Black Ops’

The United States has been gradually withdrawingtroops from Afghanistan since2011. According to President BarackHussein Obama, only 9,800 “peacekeeping”troops will remain by the end of December,and all the troops are supposed to be goneby the end of 2016, ending the longest war in Americanhistory. But what exactly are we still doing inAfghanistan after 13 years and why did we really go there in the first place?

The stated reason for invading Afghanistan in2001 was to capture Osama bin Laden, who allegedlyled al Qaeda—the terrorist group that supposedlycarried out the September 11 attacks—from a cave in Afghanistan.

But after a long, drawn-out war. former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta said in June 2010 that there were fewer than 100 members of al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. Then, on May 2, 2011, we were told that SEAL Team Six finally found and killed bin Laden in Pakistan and his body was dumped into the sea a couple of days later. At this point “our” stated mission was over.

Yet three and a half years later, U.S. soldiers are still killing and getting killed in Afghanistan.

When Obama was elected to office in 2008, there were only 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. When “we” supposedly killed bin Laden in 2011, that number had increased to over 100,000. Until a year ago, there were still 68,000 troops there. Why were they still there? After all, it costs U.S. taxpayers $10 billion a month to remain in that mountainous country.

Further muddying the issue is the fact that todaythere are even more private contractors in Afghanistanthan there are soldiers. In 2013, while therewere 68,000 American troops stationed there,there were also 108,000 private contractors in thecountry. That amounts to 1.6 mercenaries for everyAmerican soldier.

At this point, it has become pretty clear that September 11 and bin Laden were just the excuse that Washington needed to invade Afghanistan.

War is big business, and the weapons industry,along with the banking industry, has reaped trillionsof dollars from Afghanistan.According to Harvard’s prestigious Kennedy School of Government,the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will end upcosting $6 trillion, or $75,000 for each Americanhousehold—a huge sum that only serves to enrich bomb-makers and bankers.

Besides the trillions of dollars made by the warand finance industries, a second major reason forattacking Afghanistan was to control the energy resourcesfrom the Caspian Sea area and preventIran and Russia from building pipelines to Pakistanand India. But that’s not all.

Proceeds from illegal drug trafficking have alwaysbeen a great source for funding illegal black-opsprojects by the CIA and other intelligenceservices. Control of the Golden Triangle’s opiumwas a major reason behind the Vietnam War. TheIran-Contra scandal was about cocaine, and it iswell documented by Gary Webb, Barry Seal andothers that the CIA has been the main cocaine trafficker into the United States.

Opium (and its refined products) is a$65 billion-a-year business, and $55 billion of that comes fromthe smuggling of heroin. Afghanistan alone accounts for 90% of the world’s annual opium production.

While Afghanistan has long been a major producerof opium, the Taliban in 2001 eradicatedthree-quarters of the world’s crop of opium poppiesin one season. In that year, production plummeted from 3,300 metric tons to 200 metric tons.

In 2002, however, the year after the U.S invasion,poppy production shot up to 3,400 tons. By 2007,production had skyrocketed to an all-time high of7,400 tons. In 2014, annual cultivation reached 225,000hectares, the highest level in Afghanistan’s history, according to published reports.

But the U.S. government still maintains that it is“fighting a war on drugs.” According to John F.Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general forAfghanistan reconstruction, the U.S. has made a“mammoth investment” to stop the opium andheroin trade. On January 15, Sopko said in a testimonybefore the Senate Caucus on International NarcoticsControl, that the U.S. has spent $10 billionsince 2002 to combat Afghan poppy production and to induce farmers to plant alternative crops.

But Sopko was also quick to point out that American efforts to quell poppy production in Afghanistan have been a massive failure. In fact, opium remains Afghanistan’s biggest cash crop, and poppy-derived products brought $3 billion to Afghanistan in 2013, constituting 15% of its gross domestic product.

Pete Papaherakles is a writer and political cartoonist for AFP and is also AFP’s outreach director. Pete is interested in getting AFP writers and editors on the podium at patriotic events. Call him at 202-544-5977 if you know of an event youthink AFP should attend.

2 Comments on Afghanistan Opium and ‘Black Ops’

As I examine the things that are being set in place to seat the world dictator in TYRE, it saddens my heart. God’s Word declares that the world would be deceived by DRUGS. This government that lies to the people, is the one that is setting things in place for the Son of Perdition, who will be seated in TYRE. The 10th world economical power, the W.E.O.G., which is Israel and the Arab nations, will soon be set in place. The world dictator will rule the W.T.O. Don’t accept His evil works, the banks, the credit cards, the mortgages, the vacation places. You will have an angel rescue you.